Craig Federighi was born in the 1960s in San Leonardo, California. Federighi was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1991, before pursuing a Master of Science in Computer Science from the same university in 1993.
Federighi made his way to Apple after it acquired his employer NeXT in 1996, but he left shortly after to work at Ariba in 1999, serving as its Chief Technology Officer. Ten years later, Federighi rejoined Apple to lead macOS engineering, before being named Vice President of Mac Software Engineering in 2011. Federighi once again expanded his responsibilities at Apple in 2012, leading iOS engineering efforts as the company’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering after the departure of Scott Forstall.
Reporting directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Federighi oversees the development and engineering of all software platforms at Apple, including iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS. Other efforts that Federighi is responsible for include Swift, Apple’s programming language intended to replace Objective-C, the Rosetta 2 software to run x86 programs on Apple silicon Macs, and Apple Intelligence, the company’s suite of artificial intelligence features.
Craig Federighi is perhaps the most well-known Apple executive due to his numerous appearances on stage during the company’s events, leading the introduction of famous products and technologies. Following his first onstage presentation at WWDC 2009 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard introduction, Federighi has become a staple presenter, particularly at annual WWDC keynotes.